Working Paper Series,
IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: How pervasive is labor market discrimination against immigrants and what options do policymakers and migrants have to reduce it? To answer these questions, we conducted a field experiment on employer discrimination in Sweden. Going beyond existing work, we test for a large range of applicant characteristics using a factorial design. We examine whether migrants can affect their employment chances – by adopting citizenship, acquiring work experience, or signaling religious practice – or whether fixed traits such as country of birth or gender are more consequential. We find no evidence that immigrants can affect their employment chances by any of the tested means. Rather, ethnic hierarchies are critical: callback rates decline precipitously with the degree of ethno-cultural distance, leaving Iraqis and Somalis, especially if they are male, with much reduced employment chances. These findings highlight that immigrants have few tools at their disposal to escape ethnic penalties and that efforts to reduce discrimination must address employer prejudice.

Keywords: country of birth; citizenship; gender; work-experience; religion; discrimination; field experiment; labor market

JEL-codes: J23; J71

49 pages, November 7, 2018

Full text files

wp2018-17-employer-d...hnic-hierarchies.pdf  Full text

Download statistics

• IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy
• Ordering Working Papers
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Ali Ghooloo ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-02-05 17:11:49.